LANSING, MI – In a lifetime of covering Michigan politics, I have never seen anything like the mess in Lansing last week.
Michigan Democrats, especially those in the state house of representatives, did everything they could to convince voters that they were not only right to turn control over to Republicans in November, but that Democrats were utterly incapable of governing a kindergarten classroom, let alone the state.
Individual members wasted time, doomed hundreds of bills to extinction that had been passed by one house or another, failed to show up when needed, and denounced each other instead of doing their jobs, for which they are paid $71,685 a year. One previously obscure member, State Rep. Karen Whitsett, (D-Detroit) torpedoed one session by leaving before the work was done.
She then first refused to come in to work, then came and apparently hid in the Capitol instead of taking her seat, which caused outgoing Speaker of the House Joe Tate, another Detroit Democrat, to give up, and send everyone home until New Year’s Eve, when they will only have time to adjourn for good, since the new, Republican-controlled body will take office on New Year’s Day.
Not only that, Whitsett, who is Black, denounced Tate, the House’s first African-American speaker, in a profanity-laced interview with the Gongwer news service, in which she said “Thank God,” her party had lost the majority, because all they had been voting on was “garbage bills and crap.”
Republicans didn’t exactly cover themselves with glory, either. State Rep. Matt Hall, the incoming speaker of the House, got every GOP member of the state house to walk out in the final days, to protest Democrats refusal to vote on bills that would roll back minimum wage increases for tipped workers and new guarantees of sick time for all workers mandated by the Michigan Supreme Court.
That mattered mainly because the Democrats had only a 56-54 majority, and at least 56 members (a quorum) have to be present for the House to legally do business. That meant Democrats had to have every member present, and when Whitsett disappeared, the body couldn’t function. It’s hard to see why Democrats didn’t call the Republicans’ bluff and vote on the bills they demanded.
After all, Hall didn’t demand that the House pass his bills, just vote on them. And even if a few House Democrats had joined the GOP to roll back the minimum wage, that would be meaningless unless the state senate, still controlled by Democrats, also agreed, and Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed them.
That wasn’t about to happen.
What did happen was chaos. A little background: During election years, lawmakers traditionally come back to the Capitol for a few weeks for what is traditionally called a “lame-duck” session, because a number of lawmakers won’t be coming back in January, because of defeats, retirements or term limits.
Sometimes, lawmakers whose careers are about to end agree to sponsor generally unpopular bills, like pay raises for themselves, which are later blamed on those no longer around.
Lame-duck sessions get especially interesting when party control changes. Then, there’s usually frantic activity as the outgoing majority tries to pass bills they’d never be able to get through once they lose power. This year, Michigan Republicans feared that Democrats, who still control the state senate, would try to ram through all sorts of “progressive” or “left-wing” laws.
Twelve years ago, when the situation was reversed, Republicans locked the Capitol doors in Lansing and rammed through legislation making Michigan a right-to-work state, outraging labor unions. Right-to-work was swiftly repealed in 2023, after Democrats won control of both houses of the legislature for the first time in 40 years, and Democrats passed a blizzard of legislation that year.
This year, however, things dramatically slowed down.
Democrats intended to remedy that during this year’s lame duck session, but instead things crashed and burned.
Governor Whitmer added to the paralysis when she announced she wouldn’t sign anything unless the lawmakers (apparently first) sent her finished bills dealing with her priorities, which included a long-term road funding deal. That didn’t happen.
Her favorites and many other bills that should have been enacted were left to die, including tougher regulations on polluters and laws extending Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act to cover the governor and members of the legislature.
To its credit, the Michigan senate did behave responsibly, holding a record 29-hour session, after the petulant House recessed, with members of both parties showing up, and giving final passage to 88 bills previously passed by the House.
Whether Whitmer changes her mind and signs them remains to be seen. What is certain, however, is that Michigan’s elected leaders disgraced themselves.
Though almost no one looked good, the most direct political damage was likely suffered by outgoing Speaker Tate, who wants to run for mayor of Detroit. State Rep. Joey Andrews, a Democrat from southwest Michigan, posted on the social media site X that “Tate’s one remarkable success was uniting liberals and conservatives, labor and business in being happy to see his tenure end.”
If this wasn’t a session to live in infamy, it came close.
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(A version of this column appeared in the Toledo Blade)
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